Custer's Last Stand

Biographical documentary of one of the most charismatic and contradictory American leaders of the 19th century who met his death, along with nearly a third of his army, in June 1876 near the Little Bighorn River in Montana Territory. General George Armstrong Custer ordered his soldiers to drive back a large army of Lakota and Cheyenne warriors, but the man with a reputation for fearless and often reckless courage was defeated by Sitting Bull, the charismatic leader of the Plains Indians. The programme charts the manner in which Custer's turbulent career encompassed triumph and disaster, and reveals how the wife he adored was almost single-handedly responsible for mythologising her husband's exploits, turning the Battle of the Little Bighorn into one of the most iconic events in American history.